e 



EXTRACT 

FROM THE ANNUAL REPORT OF THE 

COMMISSIONER OF INDIAN AFFAIRS, 

FOR THE YEAR 1868. 



The question of the Transfer of the Indian Bureau to the 
War Department. 



It will be seen by recurring to the proceedings of the Peace 
Commission, at its late meeting, at Chicago, that a resolution 
was adopted, recommending to Congress the " transfer " of 
the Indian Bureau to the War Department. In view of 
probable action upon that recommendation, and impelled 
by solemn convictions of duty, I feel called upon to offer 
some facts and arguments for the consideration of Confess 
in opposition to the proposed " transfer," and to give some 
views, suggested by nearly two years' intimate connection 
with the Indian service, with regard to the best method for 
the future conduct* of Indian Affairs. 

In 1849, Congress, upon the creation of the Department 
of the Interior, for satisfactory reasons, incorporated the 
Bureau of Indian Affairs in that Department, giving to its 
head the supervisory and appellate powers, theretofore, exer- 
cised over Indian Affairs by the Secretary of War. It is 
now proposed to re-transfer the Bureau to the War Office. 

The question for legislative solution will be three-fold. 
Shall the Bureau be transferred to the War Department ? 
or, shall it remain under the direction of the Secretary of 
the Interior ? or, shall it be erected into an independent 
Department, upon an equal footing, in all respects, with t he 
other Departments, as recommended unanimously, by the 
Peace Commission, in their report to the President, of 7th 
January last ? 

I shall endeavor to present some strong reasons against 
the " transfer." These, I proceed to offer, assuming all the 
time that the " transfer " means that, m future, all our In- 



2 

dian Affairs are to be administered by the army, under the 
direction of the War Office. 

My reasons in opposition are : 1st. That the prompt, effi- 
cient, and successful management and direction of our Indian 
Affairs is too large, onerous, and important a burden to be 
added to the existing duties of the Secretary of War. 

There is a limit to human capacity and endurance, and 
when either is taxed beyond that limit, it must fail in the 
performance of its functions, and the result must be disap- 
pointment, and most probably, disaster to the service. 

The business of the AVar Department, in all its varied 
and complex ramifications, is sufficient already, if properly 
transacted, to employ all the faculties of the most accom- 
plished head, even with all the aids he may summon to his 
assistance, and there are few men living, if any, who can 
give the requisite attention to its demands, and at the same 
time discharge properly and with the requisite promptness 
the delicate, important, and numerous duties the care of 
Indian Affairs would superadd. 

None can deny that the safe and successful management 
of Jhe Military Affairs of a Eepublic of 40,000,000 of people, 
demands the constant and exclusive exercise of all the pow- 
ers of an accomplished and experienced statesman. 

A little investigation, and even a superficial knowledge 
and a little reflection will convince every candid mind that 
there is no branch of the public service more intricate and 
difficult, and involving more varied and larger public and 
private interests than our " Indian Affairs," none requiring 
in their control and direction, a larger brain, or a more sen- 
sitive and charitable heart. 

If these things be true, the conclusion is irresistable, that 
the proposed "transfer" is unreasonable and wrong. 

If the argument applies as well to the Interior as to the 
War Department, let it be so ; its force is not abated by the 
admission. 

2d. The "transfer" creates a necessity for maintaining a large 
standing army in the field. 

I yield to none in admiration and love of the gallant offi- 
cers and soldiers of the army. They are the hope of the na- 
tion in times of public danger, when the honor, integrity, or 
the existence of the Republic is threatened by foreign or 
domestic foes. But " there is a time for all things;" and I 
submit that a time of peace is not the time for a large stand- 



3 



ing army. In time of war, the army is our wall of defence. 
In peace, large armies exhaust the national resources, and 
are a standing menace to liberty. The safety of the country, 
in peace, is not to be sought in a magnificent array of bayo- 
nets ; but, in the virtue, intelligence, industry, and patriot- 
ism of the citizens. 

With the restoration of all the States to their peaceful 
relations to the Federal Government, and the return of their 
population to industrial avocations and prosperity ; if peace 
is maintained, as at the present, with all foreign powers, our 
military establishment should soon be reduced to a peace 
footing, its material returned to industrial and producing 
employments, and the people, to the extent of many millions 
of dollars, annually relieved of taxes ; now expended in the 
support and pay of the army. 

Surely, Congress is not prepared to transfer the Indian 
Bureau to the War Department, merely to create a neces- 
sity to keep up an army, and with it the taxes. 

3d. Our true policy towards the Indian tribes is peace, and the 
proposed transfer is tantamount, in my judgement, to perjoetual 
war. Every body knows that the presence of troops, with 
the avowed purpose of regulating affairs by force, arouses 
feelings of hostility, and begets sentiments of resistance and 
war even in the most civilized and peaceful communities. 
How much more intense and bitter are the feelings of hos- 
tility engendered in the bosoms of barbarians and semi- 
civilized Indians by the presence of soldiers, who they 
know are sent to force them into subjection, and keep them 
so. To their ears, the sounds of the camp, and the boom of 
the morning and evening guns are the infallible signs of 
oppression and war, and the very sight of armed and uni- 
formed soldiers in their haunts and hunting grounds, pro- 
vokes and inflames the profoundest feelings of hostility and 
hate. 

If a chronic war, with additional expenses of $50,000,000 
to $150,000,000 on account of Indian Affairs is desired, the 
transfer, it seems to me, is a logical way to the result. 

More than half the period, in which this Bureau was 
under the control of the War Office, was occupied in the 
prosecution of costly and unprofitable, as well as unjust wars 
against the Seminoles, the Sacs and Foxes, and in vexatious 
and expensive troubles with the Creeks, and Cherokees. 
It should not be forgotten, in this connection, that almost 



4 



all the Indian wars which have depleted the treasury and 
desolated oar frontiers, even since the Bureau was given 
to the Interior Department, had their origin in the precipi- 
tate and ill-considered action of the military stationed in 
the Indian country. As examples, I respectfully refer to 
the Sioux war of 1852-4, which originated in this wise : 
an immigrant mormon train abandoned a cow, a lieuten- 
ant and squad went to the camp of the Indians who had 
found and eaten her, and demanded the man who had killed 
her. The Indians refused to surrender the man, but offered to 
pay for the cow. The lieutenant and his squad fired upon 
them, killing and wounding a number, when they were 
surrounded and massacred. The Sioux war ensued, cost- 
ing us $20,000,000 to $40,000,000 and several hundred 
lives, besides much private and public property. 

In April, 1864, a ranchman, Ripley, went to camp San- 
born, on South Platte, and charged the Indians with stealing 
his stock. A lieutenant Dunn proceeded to search for, but 
could not find it Falling in with a company of Cheyennes, an 
attempt was made to disarm the latter, and in the melee one 
soldier was killed, and some others wounded. Then followed 
the Cheyenne war, culminating in the massacre, at Sand 
Creek, of 120 friendly Indians, mostly women and children, 
restining their own hunting grounds under the protection of 
our flag. This affair is known as the Chivington Massacre. 

This war cost the Treasury probably not less than $40, 
000,000, an immense amount of valuable property, and no 
one can tell how many lives, involving, as it did, not only 
the Cheyennes and Apaches, but the Arapahoes, Kiowas and 
Comanches, and many bands of the Sioux, and was ended 
by the treaty of 1865, at the mouth of the little Arkansas. 

In 1866, the military took possession of the Powder river 
country in Dakota, within the ackowledged territory of the 
Sioux, and planted military posts, Phil. Kearney, Reno and 
C. F. Smith, without the consent of the Indian proprietors, 
and in direct violation of treaty stipulations. A fierce and 
bloody war ensued, costing us many millions of dollars, 
several hundred lives, including the killed at Fort Kearney 
massacre, and much valuable property. 

On the 19th of April, 1867, a military command burned 
the peaceful village of the Cheyennes on Pawnee Fork, 
Western Kansas, who had been at peace with us since the 
treaty of 1865, on the Arkansas, and were then on lands 



5 



assigned them by that treaty. The Cheyennes flew to arms 
and the war of 1867 followed, in which we lost over three hun- 
dred soldiers and citizens, several millions of dollars in ex- 
penses, and an immense amount of public and private prop- 
erty, and killed, it is believed, six Indians, and no more. 

The pretext for our celebrated Navajo war in New Mex- 
ico, was the shooting of a negro servant boy of a military 
officer, by an Indian, and the refusal to surrender the slayer 
on the part of the Navajoes, who, nevertheless, proposed to 
make the amend, after the Indian fashion, by pecuniary 
satisfaction for the offence. 

Four campaigns against the Navajoes resulted, in three of 
which our arms failed of either success or glory. In the 
fourth, the Indians succumbed to the superior strategy of 
the renowned Kit Carson, and were compelled by hunger to 
surrender. 

This war cost the Treasury many millions of dollars, and 
the people the loss of many lives, and valuable property. 

On the Pacific coast the rashnessjmprudence and imperious 
deportment ot our military produced similar unfortunate 
results, and nearly all our troubles with the Indians there 
had their origin in the presence and action of our military. 

In evidence of this statement, I refer to the letter of Mr. 
Anson Dart, ex-superintendent of Indian Affairs for Oregon 
and Washington Territories, to be found in the appendix 
herewith. 

Now, if as I think, I have shown military interference has 
been prolific of war, even since the Bureau has been in civil 
control, what of peace and tranquility can be expected if 
placed entirely in mititary hands ? 

4th. Military management of Indian Affairs has been tried for 
seventeen years and has proven a failure, and % musi, in my 
judgment, in the very nature of things, always prove a failure. 

Soldiers are educated and trained in the science of war 
and in the arts of arms. Civilians are taught in the science 
and arts of peaceful civilization. In lifting up races from 
the degradation of savage barbarism and leading them into 
the sunlight of a higher life ; in unveiling to their benight- 
ed vision the benefits of civilization and the blessings of a 
peaceful Christianity, I cannot, for the life of me, perceive 
the propriety or efficacy of employing the military instead 
of the civil departments, unless it is intended to adapt the 
Mahommedan motto, and proclaim to these people " Death 
or the Koran." 



6 



If the mass of our people desire peaceful relations with 
our Indian tribes — mean to continue to recognize their 
natural rights, as our fathers have done, and do not desire 
their violent extermination — then, I submit, the peaceful, and 
therefore the civil, and not the military agencies of the Gov- 
ernment are better adapted to secure the desired ends. 

Blight follows the sword as surely as desolation sits in the 
track of the hurricane or the conflagration. 

Has not military management essentially failed in civiliz- 
* ing the Indians? When and where did it turn their minds 
from war and the chase and fix them upon agriculture or pasto- 
ral life ? When and where did it reduce the cost of Indian 
Affairs? It has only succeeded in illuminating our historic 
pages with bloody pictures; in surcharging the hearts of 
our tribes with hatred and revenge, and spending the money 
of the people by the fifty million dollars oft repeated. 

This War Office management, now proposed, may look to 
the peace that follows extermination as the great desidera- 
tum of the service and the panacea for Indian troubles ; but 
such peace is far in the distance, if it is to depend upon 
extermination by arms. If we fought five hundred warriors 
on the little pent-up Peninsula of Florida seven years, with 
the regular army, with many thousand volunteer soldiers, and 
the navy thrown in, at a cost of 1500 lives on our part and fifty 
millions of dollars in treasure, leaving at last several hun- 
dred Seminoles in the everglades who still claim to be free, 
how long will it require, and at what expense of treasure and 
blood to exterminate (not merely subjugate) our 300,000 
Indians now occupying and roaming over the plains and 
mountains of the Interior, an area of more than 200,000 
square miles ? The truth is, the cost price of Indians slain 
in the Florida war, in the Sioux war, and in the late 
Cheyenne war, has besn on a fair average considerably more 
than a million of dollars each; and if our Indian troubles 
are to be ended by exterminating the race, it is evident at 
the present rate of one Indian killed per month, that the 
achievement will be completed at the end of exactly twenty- 
five thousand years. And if each dead Indian is to cost the 
same hereafter as heretofore, the precise sum total we will 
have to expend is $300,000,000,000 to complete the exter 
mination. But besides the cost to the treasury, it is found 
by actual comparison, approximating closely the truth, that 
the slaying of every Indian costs us the lives of twenty-five 



7 



whites, so that the extermination process must bring about 
the slaughter of 7,500,000 of our people. Extermination by 
arms is simply an absurdity, unless we could get the Indi- 
ans under the protection of the flag in large masses, surround 
and butcher them as at Sand Creek. But admitting for the 
argument they deserve extermination without mercy, and 
that we might achieve the grand consummation, it seems to 
me that the glory of the result would bear no proportion to 
the fearful sum of the cost. 

5th. It is inhuman and unchristian, in my opinion, leaving 
the question of economy out of view, to destroy a whole race by 
such demoralization and disease as military government is sure 
to entail upon our tribes. 

I know no exception to the rule that the presence of mili- 
tary posts in the Indian country is speedily subversive of 
even the strongest ideas of Indian domestic morals. Female 
chastity, the abandonment of which, in some tribes, is pun- 
ished with death, yields to bribery or fear ; marital rights 
are generally disregarded, and shameless concubinage, with 
its disgusting concomitants, spreads its pestiferous stench 
through camp and lodge. The most loathsome, lingering and 
fatal diseases which reach many generations, in their ruin- 
ous effects, are spread broadcast, and the seeds of moral and 
physical death are planted among these miserable creatures. 

If you wish to see some of the results of establishing mili- 
tary posts in the Indian country, I call your attention to the 
six or eight hundred half breeds, till recently, loafing around 
Fort Laramie ; to the posts along the Missouri ; to Fort 
Sumner in New Mexico, before the Navajoe exodus, and 
to all our military posts in the Indian country with no known 
exception. If you wish to exterminate the race, pursue them 
with ball and blade ; massacre them wholesale, as we 
sometimes have done ; or to make it cheap, call them to a 
peaceful feast and feed them on beef, salted with wolf-bane; 
but. for humanity's sake, save them from the lingering 
syphilitic poisons so sure to be contracted about military 
posts. 

t5th. The conduct of Indian Affairs is, in my judgment, 
incompatible with the nature and objects of the Military Depart- 
ment. 

The policy of our Government has always been to secure 
and maintain peaceful and friendly relations with all the 
Indian Tribes, and to advance their interests by offering 



8 



them inducements to abandon nomadic habits, and the chase, 
and to learn to adopt the habits and methods of civilized 
life. To carry this benevolent and humane policy into 
practical effect, we have stipulated to settle them upon ample 
reserves of good land, adapted to pastoral and agricultural 
pursuits ; to subsist them as long as requisite ; to supply 
them with all necessary stock and implements ; and teachers 
to instruct them in letters, in the arts of civilization, and in 
our Holy religion. But all these things pertain properly, 
as all will admit, to civil affairs, not military. Military 
officers will doubtless display wonderful skill in the erection 
of forts ; in the handling of arms and armies, and in the 
management of campaigns ; but who would not prefer a prac- 
tical civilian in the erection of corn cribs, or hay racks, in 
the manouvering of ox teams, and the successful management 
of reapers, and mowers. A well trained lieutenant will 
doubtless perform admirably in drilling a squad in the 
manual of arms, but I doubt his capacity, as well asMncli- 
nation, to teach Indians the profitable, and efficient use of 
the hoe or the mattock or to successfully instruct naked 
young Indians ideas how to shoot in a mechanical, literary, or 
or scientific direction. You wish to make your son a farmer, 
a mechanic, a minister ; you do not send him to be educated 
at West Point, but somewhere else to be taught as a civilian ! 
Will you send professional soldiers, sword in one hand, 
musket in the other, and tactics on the brain, to teach the 
wards of the nation agriculture, the mechanic arts, theology 
and peace ? You would civilize the Indian ! Will you 
send him the sword? You would inspire him with the 
peaceful principles of Christianity ! Is the bayonet their 
symbol? You would invite him to the Sanctuary! Will 
you herald his approach with the clangor of arms, and the 
thunder of artillery ? 

The nation thinks of the War Department as the channel 
through which the Chief Executive directs the movements of 
our armies, and manages all the military business and in- 
terests of the nation, not as the overseer, guardian, teacher, 
and missionary of the Indian Tribes ; it regards our officers 
and soldiers as its sword, to repel and punish its enemies in 
war, to guard and secure its honor and interests whenever 
necessary in peace, but not as its Superintendents, Agents, 
Agricultural, and Mechanical teachers of peaceful Indian 
tribes. 



9 



7th. The transfer to the War Office will be offensive to the 
Indians, and in the same proportion injurious to the whites. 

Let it be remembered that the demoralization resulting 
from the presence of military posts is not confined to the 
Indians, but re-aets with accumulated power upon the 
soldier. The contact not only depraves the savage, but in a 
greater ratio debases the soldier, even to a degradation, if posi- 
ble, more profound than, that of his comparatively innocent, 
because ignorant victim. 

The nature, and the objects of the War Department, as 
indicated by its very name War Department, are essentially 
military, while the nature of our relations with the Indians 
ought to be, and the objects aimed at in their conduct are, 
essentially civil. 

I have met many tribes within twelve months, and con- 
sulted with their chiefs, and warriors publicly, and privately, 
and without exception, they have declared their unwilling- 
ness to have the military among them. It is of paramount 
importance to the interests of peace, and to prevent wars, 
that respect should be paid to the wishes of these people in 
this matter. I believe there should be no soldiers in the 
Indian country in time of peace. Who can wonder that 
these people do not wish to be placed under the control of 
our military authorities ? What have our military ever done 
to conciliate them? Is it to be supposed they can desire to 
be governed by those who have visited upon their race all 
the woes they have experienced ? Can they forget who 
have been employed to drive them from the Atlantic to the 
plains, and who still pursue them in their mountains, and 
valleys, and persecute them even unto death ? Can they 
ever forget the insignia of those who shot down by military 
orders, their old men, women and children, under the white 
flag, and under our own banner at Sand Creek ? Will they 
forget that our military sometimes burn their homes, as at 
the Pawnee Fork, and turn their women and children un- 
sheltered into the wilderness ? 

As a rule, with rare exceptions, if any, Indian Tribes 
never break the peace without powerful provocation or actual 
wrong perpetrated against them first. If they are properly 
treated, their rights regarded, and our promises faithfully 
kept to them, our treaty engagements promptly fulfilled, and 
their wants of subsistance liberally supplied, their is seldom, 
if ever, the slightest danger of a breach of peace on their 
part. 2 



10 



If, for want of appropriations, the Indians now at war had 
not had their supplies of subsistence unfortunately stopped this 
spring, in my judo-men t, the Cheyennes and their allies would 
have been at peace with us to day. Bespect then their wishes, 
keep them well fed, and there will be no need of armies 
among them. 

But violate our pledges ; postpone, neglect or refuse the fulfil- 
ments of our treity engagements with them; permit them to get 
hungry, and half starved, and the presence of armies will not 
restrain them from war. 

8th. In the report of 1th of January last, the Peace Com- 
mission, after full examination of the whole question, unanimously 
recommended that Indian Affairs should be placed, not in the 
\¥ar Office, but upon the footing of an independent Department 
or Bureau. 

Then their facts were correct, their reasoning and conclu- 
sion sound, and to go back now upon that report and repu- 
diate their own deliberate and unanimous recommendation, 
it seems to me, will subject the commission to severe 
criticism. 

I have no reflection to cast upon those gentlemen of the 
commission who have changed front, for reasons doubtless 
satisfactory to themselves, but as no such reasons have ad- 
dressed themselves to my mind I adhere to the unanimous 
recommendation of our January report. 

I think I can readily understand, however, why my 
colleagues of the army might desire the transfer. It is but 
natural they should desire it. It is the history of power to 
seek more power, and the dispensation of patronage is power. 
Besides, it is but natural that gentlemen educated to arms, 
and of the army, should desire to see the aggrandizement of 
the army. But when the necessity for armies ceases, 
" Othello's occupation's gone," and that happy time, I trust, 
is near at hand, unless some necessity may be created, such as 
the transfer proposed would create, to keep the army indefinitely 
in the field. 

9th. The methods of military management are utterly irrecon- 
cilable with the relation of guardian and ward. 

The self assumed guardianship of our Government over 
these unlettered children of the wilderness, carries with it all 
the obligations that grow out of that relation. These can 
neither be shaken off nor disregarded without national crime 
as well as disgrace. 



♦ 



11 



Guardianship is a most sacred and responsible trust, and 
as a nation we must answer to the God of Nations for its 
faithful administration. 

The paramount duty growing out of the trust is to teach 
to enlighten, to civilize our wards If teaching meaus 
the instruction given to the Aztecs by Cortez and Pizarro ; 
if enlightening signifies the conflagration of Indian villages ; 
if civilization means peace, and peace means massacre a la 
Sand Creek ; then by all means let us have the transfer. To 
every unprejudiced mind the mere mention of the military 
in connection with the relation, of guardian, and ward dis- 
closes the absurdity of the association. 

10 th. The transfer fin my opinion, will entail upon the Treasury 
a large increase of annual expenditures. It is clearly demon- 
strable that the war policy, in conducting our Indian Affairs, 
is infinitely more expensive than the peace policy, and if the 
transfer is made, as a matter of course, the former will prevail. 
If so, it seems to me, our Legislators would do well to in- 
vestigate the question of comparative cost, I believe an ex- 
amination will show, that in the last forty years the war 
management of Indian Affairs has cost the nation little if 
any less that $500,000,000, and also, that the civil manage- 
ment or peace policy has cost less that $60,000,000, includ- 
ing annuities, presents, payments for immense bodies of land 
and everything else. 

If it be objected that the war management does not neces- 
sarily involve war — I answer that Indian management by 
the military does involve the expense of a large standing 
army in the Indian country, and will cost the country all 
war costs, except the destruction of property, and that the 
army can be far better dispensed with than not under proper 
civil management, and its cost saved to the Treasury. But 
whether war be a necessary result or not, it always happens 
that it does result, and brings with it its train of horrors 
and penalties. If it be alleged that many of our wars have 
occured under the civil administration, and are therefore 
chargeable to it, I answer that while the fact is admitted the 
conclusion is false, for it has already been abundantly shown 
that nearly all our Indian wars since the bureau has been in 
civil hands, had their origin in the rashness or imprudence 
of the military. 

If economy is desirable in our present financial situation, 
the proposed transfer will, in my judgment be disastrous. 



12 



11th. The presence in peaceful times of a large military estab- 
lishment in a Republic always endangers the supremacy of civil 
authority j and the liberties of the people 

History is so replete with striking illustrations of the truth 
of this proposition, that argument to sustain it would be 
simply attempting to prove an axiom. I therefore close 
the argument by merely announcing it. 

This brings me to the question whether the Bureau 

OUGHT NOT TO BE ERECTED INTO AN INDEPENDENT DEPART- 
MENT ? 

In whatever management Indian Affairs are placed, there 
should be division of neither duties, powers nor responsibili- 
ties, but these should all by all means be concentrated in 
the same hands. 

But, I have already shown that the War Department 
should not be entrusted with these affairs, and I am of the 
opinion that the Interior Department should not have charge 
of them, except in the alternative between the two, if for no 
other reason, from the fact that the head of that Department, 
like the Secretarv of War, has already as many duties as he 
can perform well without superadding the all imporcant 
business of Indian Affairs. 

I reach the conclusion, therefore, that the only wise and 
proper answer to the question is, that Congress ought imme- 
diately to create a department exclusively for the manage- 
ment of Indian Affairs. If, however, Congress should think 
differently and make the transfer, it seems to me in that 
event the transfer should consist in a change of jurisdiction 
from the Interior to the Secretary of War, while all 
the functions of the bureau should still be performed by 
civilians. 

If the management of " Indian Affairs " by the bureau 
under the Department of War, was a failure, and if, as is 
admitted, it has been not fully satisfactory under the Interior, 
it is clear that the mere transfer of the bureau from the one 
to the other will leave the management still a failure. 

Why talk of the "transfer, " as if the simple turning over 
of a bureau from one Department to another would magically 
cure all the defects of this branch of the public service? To 
me the proposition seems absurd. What is the "transfer?" 
Why only a change, and in my opinion from bad enough to 
worse, that's all. The War Office operated the Bureau seven- 
teen years, and it did not give satisfaction. In 184$, it was 



■» 



13 



transferred to the Interior Department, where it has remained 
ever since, and still its conduct of affairs is assailed. Bach 
Department in turn, with ample time for trial, has failed 
to manage Indian Affairs with popular approbation. If 
either Department is to blame, both are; for both in the 
public mind have failed. What is the remedy ? To know 
this we must first ascertain the cause. In my judgment the 
cause lies on the surface and is simply this: There is too 
much cargo with the capacity of the vessel, and too much 
vessel and freight for the power of the machinery. We 
have crammed into a Bureau which, under the supervisory 
and appellate power is a mere clerkship, all the large com- 
plex, difficult, and delicate affairs that ought to employ every 
function of a first-class Department. Notwithstanding 
the cause of failure before our eyes, what is the remedy? 
Surely not merely to put the old bureau under another 
crew and commander? Why such a " transfer " can give 
neither more capacity to the vessel, nor more strength to 
the machinery. There is but one reasonable answer, and 
that is, if you would be all prosperous, and safe in any sea, 
and any weather, adapt your vessel to her cargo, and your 
machinery to your vessel and tonnage, in other words 
launch a new Department of Indian Affairs, frieght it with 
the vast, and complicated reciprocal interests of both races, 
and the experiment must prove a grand success. 

Can it be that the civil departments of this great Govern- 
ment have become so degenerate and weak, or the military 
so exalted and so potent, that the functions of the one are to 
be laid at the feet of the other, and the congenial sway of 
the Republican statesman be replaced by the mailed hand of 
the military tribune? 

Is there not ingenuity and wisdom enough in the Ameri- 
can Congress to devise civil remedies for supposed bureau 
mismanagement? to strengthen where it is weak? to purge 
and purify if there is rottenness ? to punish if there is crime ? 
to concentrate power for promptness and efficiency, and to 
make responsibility answerable in proportion to power, with- 
out transtering the functions of civil government to the mili- 
tary organization ? If such a transfer of one bureau be 
necessary for successful administration, why not, upon the 
same principle, of others ; and if of the bureau, why not of 
co-ordinate departments? The argument is cumulative 
with the increase of power and the appetite which now 



demands a bureau, may require, at least, to satiate its Lunger, 
the transfer of whole departments. 

The grasp for power strengthens and enlarges with every 
concession of power, and after a while every vestige of civil 
authority may yield to its demands, and the liberties of the 
nation and the glories of the Republic wither together under 
the blighting' scepter of military despotism. 

In the management of this great branch of the public 
service, involving the varied interests and relations of the 
Government and people, with so many distinct and dissim- 
lar tribes and nations of men occupying so many gradations 
in development, and having such varied and delicate relations 
to our people, their interest, and their lives, it seems to me 
there should be one head to control, govern, and direct. In his 
hands ought to be placed all the power necessary for the 
prompt, vigorous, and efficient discharge of the duties im- 
posed upon him by law m the conduct of all Indian affairs. 
All the agents through whom he operates and upon whose 
action depends the success or failure of his administration, 
should be nominated by him to the President, for confirma- 
tion by the Senate, to continue in office during good 
behaviour. • 

He and they should be allowed adequate salaries to place 
them beyond the temptation of want. The funds applicable 
to the service ought, under proper restrictions, to be subject 
to his direction, and always appropriated, at least, one year 
in advance of their probable use. I think he ought to be a 
Cabinet Minister, with all the influence with the President 
and Congress of any other Head of Department, and have 
under his control an efficient corps of clerks, enough in 
number to transact the business of the department with 
promptness and dispatch, to hold their places during good 
behaviour. 

Connected with this department, and subject only to the 
order of its head, there should be a police force of officers 
and men sufficient in numbers to perform such duty as the 
exigencies of the Indian service might demand, reinforced 
if necessary from time to time from the regular army, or by 
volunteers, or diminished as the Secretary might advise; to 
be stationel, not in, but on the borders of the several reser- 
vations as deemed necessary by the Secretary of Indian 
Affairs. With such an organization having a competent 
head well versed in Indian affairs, holding in his own hands 



15 



all necessary powers for prompt action, the nation might 
confidently expect peace and prosperity on our borders; the 
rapid and undisturbed settlement and development of our val- 
uable mineral territories; the early and peaceful settlement of 
all our Indians on their several reservations ; their easy tran- 
sit from nomadic life and the chase to agriculture and pastoral 
pursuits; their localization in permanent habitations; their 
reception of ideas of property in things ; their instruction in 
letters, and education in the arts and sciences of civilization, 
and their adoption of the truths of our Holy religion — in 
short, the Country would inevitably soon realize a satisfac- 
tory solution of the Indian problem. But if our manage- 
ment of Indian affairs, conducted nominally by the Bureau 
under the present mixed jurisdiction of two departments, civil 
and military, is considered a failure, and if for seventeen years 
it was more than a failure under military management, 
I venture the prediction that it will continue to be a 
failure under both or either, and that it never can and never 
will be a success, unless conducted upon an independent 
basis, concentrating all necessary powers in a competent head 
and holding him responsible for their faithful and proper 
exercise. 

Sow can our Indian tribes be civilized '? 

Assuming that the Government has a right, and that it is 
its duty to solve the Indian question definitely and decisively, 
it becomes necessary that it determine at once the best and 
speediest method of its solution, and then armed with right 
to act in the interest of both races. 

If might makes right, we are the strong and they the 
weak, and we would do no wrong to proceed by the cheapest 
and nearest route to the desired end ; and could, therefore, 
justify ourselves in ignoring the natural as well as the con- 
ventional rights of the Indians, if the}' stand in the way, 
and as their lawful masters, assign them their status and 
their tasks, or put them out of their own way and ours by 
extermination with the sword, starvation, or by any other 
method. If, however, they have rights as well as we, then 
clearly it is our duty as well as sound policy so to solve the 
question of their future relations to us and each other, as to 
secure their rights and promote their highest interests in the 
simplest, easiest, and most economical way possible. 

But to assume they have no rights is to deny the funda- 
mental principles of Christianity, as well as to contradict 



16 



the whole theory upon which the Government has uniformly 
acted towards them. We are, therefore, bound to respect 
their rights, and if possible make our interests harmonize with 
them. This brings us to the consideration of the question — 

Sow can the Indian problem be solved, so as best to protect 
and secure the rights of the Indians, and, at the same time, pro- 
mote the highest interests of both races f 

This question has long trembled in the hearts of philan- 
thropists, and perplexed, the brains of statesmen. It is one 
that forces itself, at this moment, upon Congress and the 
country for an immediate practical answer. The time for 
speculation and delay has passed ; action must be had / and 
that promptly. History and experience have laid the key 
to its solution in our hands at the proper moment, and all 
we need do is to use it, and we at once reach the desired 
answer. It so happens that under the silent and seemingly 
slow operation of efficient causes, certain tribes of our In- 
dians have already emerged from a state of Pagan barbar- 
ism, and are, to day, clothed in the garments of civilization, 
and sitting under the vine and fig tree of an intelligent 
scriptural Christianity. 

Within the present centurjr their blanketed fathers strug- 
gled in deadly conflict with our pioneer ancestors in the 
lovely valleys of Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi; 
among the mountain gorges, and along the banks of the 
lovely streams of Western North Carolina and East Ten- 
nessee, and in the everglades of Florida ; and made classic the 
fields of Talladega, Emuckfau, and the Horse Shoe, which 
gave to history and fame the illustrious name of Andrew 
Jackson. 

Within the memory of living men their tomahawks re- 
flected the light of the burning cabins of white settlers on 
the Nolachucka and French Broad, the Hiewassee, and the 
Tennessee Rivers, and their tributaries ; their scalping 
knives dripped with the blood of our border settlers, and 
their defiant battle fields woke the echoes among the green 
savannahs and vine tangled forests of the South. 

But behold the contrast which greets the world to-day ! 
The blanket and the bow are discarded, the spear is broken, 
and the hatchet and war club lie buried ; the skin lodge and 
primitive tepe have given place to the cottage and the man- 
sion ; the buckskin robe, the paint and beads have vanished, 
and are now replaced with the tasteful fabrics of the civi 



17 



lized loom. Medicine lodges and their orgies, and heathen 
offerings are mingling with the dust of a forgotten idolatory. 

School houses abound, and the feet of many thousand 
little Indian children — children intelligent and thirsting after 
knowledge are seen every day entering these vestibules of 
science, while churches, dedicated to the christian's God, and 
vocal with his praise from the lips of redeemed thousands, 
reflect from their domes and spires the earliest rays and 
latest beams of that Sun whose daily light now blesses 
them as five christian and enlightened nations, so recently 
heathen savages. 

The Cherokee^, Choctaws, Chickasaws, Creeks, and Semi- 
noles are the tribes to which I refer. They are to-day civi- 
lized and christian peoples. True, there are portions of each 
tribe still carrying with them the leaven of their ancestral 
paganism and superstition, but their average intelligence is 
very nearly up to the standard of like communities of whites. 
If any doubt this statement, I respecctfully make profert of 
the delegates of these tribes now to be found in this City. 

As a body, the men representing all these tribes in Wash- 
ington, will compare favorably with any like number of rep- 
resentative men in our State Legislatures and our National 
Congress, as respects breath and vigor of native intellect, 
thorougness of cultivation and propriety and refinement of 
manners. 

I could refer to other tribes and parts of tribes, but 
those mentioned already will serve the purpose in view. 

Thus the fact stands out clear, well defined and indisput- 
able that Indians, not only as individuals, but as tribes are 
capable of civilization and christianization. 

Now, if like causes,under similar circumstances,always pro- 
duce like effects, which no sensible person will deny, it is clear 
that the application of the same causes that have resulted in 
civilizing these tribes, to Other tribes under similar circum- 
stances must produce their civilization. 

What leading or essential causes then operated in civili- 
zing the Cherokees and these ^ther tribes ? The Cherokees 
lived on the borders of the white settlements for a great 
while, with a boundless wilderness behind them, to which 
they retired after each successive advance of the whites, un- 
til, at length, they reached the mountainous regions of North 
Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and what is 
now known as East Tennessee. Here thev remained for 
3 



18 



many years, until the enterprise cf the whites surrounded 
their possessions on all sides and began to press heavily up- 
on their borders. Down to this period the Cherokees had 
made but small advance in civilization. They were still 
dependant largely on the chase — still clung to the habits 
and customs of their savage ancestors, and little change 
will be found to have taken place in their habits of thought 
and life until the pressure of immigration on all sides com- 
pelled them to so reduce the area of their territory by suc- 
cessive cessions of land, and so destroyed and drove away 
their game as to compel them to resort to agriculture and 
pastoral pursuits, to save themselves from famine. Agricul- 
ture and stock breeding brought with them the important 
idea of individual rights, or of personal property, and the 
notion of fixed local habitations, of sale and barter, of profit 
and loss, &c. Contact with the white settlements all round 
confirmed and fastened this new class of ideas upon them, 
which soon resulted in a corresponding change of habits, 
customs, and manners. With this change of ideas and 
habits, when the ancient was struggling more and more 
feebly with the modern — when darkness was more and more 
fading away before advancing light — Christianity, under the 
labors of Godly Missionaries, who had exiled themselves 
from society and home for the love of God and souls, began 
to lay its foundations upon the ruins of a crumbling heath- 
enism. These faithful men went forth, "bearing precious 
seed," struggled and toiled, endured severe privations, afflic- 
tions, and trials, and sowed in tears the germs of light, truth, 
and hope, which have ripened into a glorious harvest of 
intelligence and christian civilization. This tribe is not 
only civilized and self supporting, but before the fearful 
disasters of the great rebellion fell upon them, were perhaps 
the richest people, per capita, in the world. 

This historical sketch demonstrates beyond question, that 
the mainsprings of Cherokee civilation were — 

1st. The circumscribing of ^their territorial domain. This 
resulted in — 

2d. The localization of the members of the tribe, and 
consequently in — 

3d. The necessity of agriculture, and pastoral pursuits 
instead of the chase as a means of existence, and as a logical 
sequence — 



L9 



4th. The introduction of ideas of property in things, of 
sale, and barter, &c., and hen^e — 

5th. Of course a corresponding change from the ideas, 
habits and customs of savages, to those of civilized life, 
and 

6th. The great coadjutor in the whole work, in all irs 
progress, the christian teacher, and missionary moving " pari 
passu " with every other cause. 

Unless history is a fable, and the observation and the ex- 
perience of living men a delusion or a lie, I have demon- 
strated that an Indian tribe may become civilized. I think 
the causes operating that result are also clearly shown, so 
that they are patent and palpable to every observer, and I 
might close the argument here with "it is demonstrated." 

But truth must not only be demonstrated, it is necessary 
also to impress it with fact upon fact. Argument must not 
only be conclusive ; it must be made weighty by cumula- 
tive truths. 

To make the logic of the argument and the conclusions 
irresistable, let it be remembered, that the history of the 
civilization of each of the other tribes, I have named, is, in all 
its leading features, the same. The necessities imposed by 
diminished territory, of individual localization and perma- 
nent habitation, of abandonment of the chase, of resorting to 
the herd, the flock, the field, the plow, the loom, and the 
anvil ; of embarracing ideas of property in things ; of a change 
of habits, customs, laws, &c, to suit new ideas, and new 
methods of life, and of imbibing, corresponding ideas of 
morals and religion, operated alike in all these tribes, and 
lead them each through the same pathway into the broad 
sunlight of our civilization. 

Now if the laws of God are immutable, the application of 
similar causes to each of the other tribes under our jurisdic- 
tion, must produce a like effect upon each. If the Cherokees, 
Choctaws, Chickasaws, Creeks and Seminoles are civilized 
and advancing in development, so will be the Cheyennes, 
Arapahoes, Apaches, Kiowas, Comanches, Sioux, and all 
other tribes, if we will only use the means in their cases that 
have been so wonderfully successful in the first named 
tribes. 

It may be objected that some of our tribes have long been 
under the action of kindred causes, but have not advanced 
in numbers, knowledge, or civilization. This I emphatically 
deny. 



20 



If tribes long under the care of the Government have 
failed to improve, and advance, the causes of the failure lie 
on the surface, and are easily seen by those who will take 
the trouble to look. 

Our course has generally been to circumscribe, but not 
to localize them in the proper sense, and thus give them 
the certainty of fixed and permanent homes, but to hold 
them as pilgrims, resting a year or two on this reservation, 
and then removing them to a new one on the outer verge of 
civilization, there to linger awhile in sad suspense, till the 
remorseless rapacity of our race requires them* to move 
farther back into darkness again. 

These miserable wanderers, after rest in their new reser- 
vations which are always assured to them, and their children 
forever by our Government in the treaty, meet with a fearful 
drawback upon their prospects at every remove. Beyond 
the tide of emigration, and hanging like the froth of the 
billows upon its very edge, is generally a host of bad men, 
who introduced among the Indians every form of demorali- 
zation and desease, with which depraved humanity in its 
most degraded forms is ever afflicted. These are, by far, the 
most numerous examples of civilization, except the military, 
these creatures ever see. And just when better people begin 
to appear in the advance of emigration around and among 
them, away they are required to move again. It is no won- 
der that the philosophic Chief of the Arapaboes, Little 
Raven, laughed heartily in my face when having told him 
something of hell and heaven. I remarked that all good 
men, white and red, would go to heaven, and all bad ones 
to hell. Inquiring the cause of his merriments, when he 
had recovered his breath, he said: " I was much pleased 
with what you say of heaven and hell, and the char- 
acters that will go to each after death ; its a good notion, 
heap good ; for if all the whites, are like the ones I know, 
when Indian gets to heaven, but few whites will trouble him 
there, pretty much all go to tother place." 

Thus while we have been puzzling our brains to find a so- 
lution of the problem of Indian civilization and christiani- 
zation, the fact of their capability for both, and of the man- 
ner of achieving both, is demonstrated to us so clearly that 
there is no possibility of being deceived. 

What then is our duty as the guardian of all the Indians 
under our jurisdiction? To outlaw, to pursue, to hunt 
down like wolves and slay ? 



21 



Must we drive and exterminate them, "as if void of reason 
and without souls? 
Surely, no. 

It is, beyond question, our most solemn duty to protect 
and care for, to elevate and civilize them. 

We have taken their heritage and it is a grand and mag- 
nificent heritage. Now is it too much that we carve for 
them liberal reservations out of their own lands and guar- 
antee them homes forever ? Is it too much that we supply 
them with agricultural implements, mechanical tools, domes- 
tic animals, instructors in the useful arts, teachers, physi- 
cians, and christian missionaries ? If we find them fierce, 
hostile and revengeful ; if they are cruel, &nd if they some- 
times turn upon us and burn, pillage, and desolate our fron- 
tiers and perpetrate atrocities that sicken the soul and para- 
lyze us with horror, let us remember that two-hundred 
and fifty years of injustice, oppression and wrong heaped 
upon them by our race, with cold calculating and relentless 
perseverance, have filled them with the passion of revenge 
and made them desperate. It remains for us, if we would 
not hold their lands with their blighting curse and the curse 
of a just God, who holds nations to a strict accountability 
upon it, to do justice and more than justice to the remnant ; 
to hide our past injustice under the mantle of present and fu- 
ture mercy, and to blot out their remembrance of wrongs 
and oppressions by deeds of G-od-like love and benevolence. 

That they can be elevated and enlightened to the proud 
station of civilized manhood is demonstrated. We know 
the process by which this result is accomplished. Our duty 
is plain, let us enter upon its discharge without delay. End 
the war policy ; create a new Department of Indian affairs ; 
give it a competent head; clothe him with adequate powers 
for the performance of all his duties; define these duties 
clearly and hold him to a strict accountability. 



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